style.com: style file, parsons grads make their retail debut at début

While a certain Monday night party was all about celebrating established talent, one Tuesday night party was concerned with establishing talent. Début, the year-old Noho boutique with a mission to find the next bright young design things, hosted a cocktail party to kick off a week of Parsons appreciation. For the next five days the store will sell handpicked pieces from a select group of 2009 Parsons grads. Prices for the one-of-a-kind items (none of this group has distribution deals yet, it seems) range from $200 to $2,000. We swooned for Robert Fitzsimmons (a.k.a. the class of ’09’s Womenswear Designer of the Year) laser-cut fuchsia cocktail dress, and Fitzsimmons, when pressed about his post-graduation dream boss, proved to be fittingly ambitious. “Um, Karl Lagerfeld,” he said with a hopeful shrug. “He’s one in a trillion.” Parsons dean Simon Collins seemed equally optimistic. “We have to design ourselves out of this recession,” he said when asked about his college grads’ admittedly dim career prospects. “New people are going to take over.” Did ya hear that, CFDA winners?
—Alison Baenen